


Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust

by PyroKlepto



Series: Praying For Winter [2]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Ghosts, Grief, Leonard Snart (Mentioned) - Freeform, Raymond Palmer (briefly), Sara Lance (briefly) - Freeform, just suffer with me, look i have no excuses for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 04:29:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10153679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PyroKlepto/pseuds/PyroKlepto
Summary: Sometimes, places that once gave you a sense of comfort and safety become something darker. Sometimes they become graveyards for old memories.The past can't burn. Memories are forever.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sorry for this. It is the second one shot in the Praying For Winter collection. You'll see what it's about when you read it. For those who don't know, the Praying For Winter collection is a series that details Mick's grief and how he handles it - or doesn't handle it. Since, you know, the show did a horrid job of that.
> 
> Enjoy, and feel free to leave comments of any calibre. Just don't be a jerk about them.

_“Is this really what you want?”_

The question kept ringing in circling echoes through his head. He had heard it many times before, though not with love; it had been spoken angrily, in an attempt to guilt or shame him into not doing something.

It wasn’t now. Somehow.

He could have just taken the jumpship; not said anything, and gone back… well, it couldn’t really be seen as home in his mind now.

But he hadn’t. He had walked onto the bridge and announced the desire to go back to Central City, 2016. There had been no real protests; though as always the captain acted as though he wanted Mick to stick around. He always did. Mick wasn’t sure the sentiments he swore were false were shown for any reason other than to give the rest of the crew the illusion that he had intended for Mick to stick around at all.

After it was all said and done, they were making a course back. Mick said nothing, sitting in the seat beneath the restraints and simply thinking.

There were a few people he’d miss, he supposed. Well, as much as a man like him could miss anyone. Sara - he enjoyed the few times he had spent with her, admired her. (She’d make a good Rogue, Leonard had often said. Mick agreed.) Jax was a good kid; too good sometimes, but still. (Mick hoped life went well for him; and his mother too.) And Ray, well. He was annoying most of the time but somehow seemed to care what happened to others. (He knew what loyalty was. Not many had as good a grasp on it as Haircut did.)

But as much as he admitted deep down that he had come to at least tolerate - if not like - some of the members on this crew, he didn’t belong. He didn’t want to belong. Not here.

So he was going back to where it had all started. Or a few months after it had, anyway. Back to a year and a place that wasn’t home anymore; but the only place he knew to go.

He wondered if it would be any different. 2013 hadn’t been. Would the timeline have changed in 2016 by now? Or would it be simply lauded by those who didn’t know the truth as an unsurprising happenstance? Criminals moved on to other cities or were imprisoned in a faraway place or gunned down in the streets all the time. Who knew where a criminal, infamous or not, went when they vanished?

Mick wondered if Leonard would have wanted people to know. Wanted the world to know what happened.

For the first time in thirty years, Mick didn’t know what his partner would have wanted. Sometimes, he had been uncertain, but his guesses had always proven correct. (When you knew someone for so long and had grown so close to them, you had a habit of knowing what they wanted and when they wanted it.)

And yet, not anymore.

The Waverider landed. Mick rose from his seat, knowing that a goodbye was in order.

He walked straight for the exit without saying a word. He had never been fond of goodbyes. And if he hadn’t said goodbye to Leonard, it didn’t feel right to say goodbye to the group of people who had led him to his fate.

But of course, that wasn’t in his cards. Most of the crew followed him outside, under the late noon sky and the city lights glowing in the distance. Once those lights had heralded home…

“Is this really what you want?”

The question again. Mick tore his gaze away from the city on the horizon and back to the people standing behind him, lingering near the entrance to the timeship as though afraid to get too close.

Mick made a quiet sound in the back of his throat, glancing between Central City and the crew for a moment before letting his eyes remain on the three in the forefront; Sara, Jax, and Ray, again. Of course.

The question was Ray’s. Mick looked at him for a long moment.

_I don’t know what I want anymore. Truth is, it doesn’t matter._

He pushed his hands into his pockets. “Wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t what I wanted, Haircut. Stop worryin’ over me.”

Ray nodded. A brief silence fell upon the small group, before Sara stepped forward. Mick tensed, hoping she wasn’t going to hug him. Instead, she handed him a small bottle of Jameson’s. “For the road.”

The goodbyes continued for a few moments; wishes for luck, reminders to check in now and again. As if they were simply friends leaving a party and bidding one another farewell until the next, and not a group of acquaintances who might well never see one another again in this lifetime, or any other.

Mick wasn’t sure if the sensation in his chest was relief or bittersweetness when the timeship disappeared again, leaving him standing on the outskirts of Central City.

The streets, when he finally arrived after a few hours of walking - he was in no hurry - were as busy as they usually were. No one paid the man in the worn green coat any mind, and he preferred it that way.

Strange. The streets were, by Central City’s standards, busy. But somehow the surroundings felt as empty and unwelcoming as the Vanishing Point had. Not unfamiliar; but off. Something seemed wrong. And if he didn’t know the answer already, he would have wondered what the unsettled feeling in his chest was.

But he knew. Something seemed wrong because something was missing. Something important. Something that had made this place home to begin with.

Mick didn’t stop walking until he reached the hidden-away place he had spent so much of his time. The primary safehouse, the one he and Leonard had chosen first and the one they had improved and taken great care of over the years.

There were the ghosts of memories inside. As he wandered from room to room with trembling hands, they haunted his steps.

Memories of fights often borne of nothing but restlessness. Late night drinks while watching pointless reruns and news reports on the old television set in the corner. Endless nights spent with heist plans spread out over the table with food resting off to the side. Drunken rants about the other rogues or the local police. The time spent working on his latest project at the worktable while Leonard lounged on the threadbare sofa.

Dusty memories of two boys escaping juvie and running away; of the boy who grew up too fast, who suggested the safehouse to begin with, who built an entire legacy and a name for himself from the remains of a childhood that would have killed lesser men.

It was no wonder the safehouse didn’t feel like home to Mick now. It had never been a home in and of itself. The man he had built it with had been what made it home. And he would not be returning here; those familiar hands would never again open the door, and that familiar blue parka would never be seen hanging on the back of the chair. Those familiar eyes would never watch him from the sofa as he tinkered with small machinery.

A graveyard of memories.

Mick stopped moving, standing still in the centre of the living space. His eyes scanned the room for a long moment, remnants of his heart threatening to tear itself free from the confines of his chest.

Then he turned in a slow circle, memories from even further back nipping at his heels. Memories from before Leonard. From before this. Memories of another place that had once been home. Of another place that now was nothing more than a graveyard from the past.

Mick left, the sky now a deep indigo above him, shreds of dark grey smog and clouds drifting across the blanket of night. It took him hardly any time at all to rob a department store of its largest containers of lighter fluid. No one tried to stop him. Not many would try to stop a man with a gun that emitted flames.

He returned to the safehouse. For a moment, something flickered in the corner of his vision and he turned, not breathing. But there was nothing there. No glacier-blue gaze, no drawling words. Nothing but silence and an empty space.

The acrid scent of the lighter fluid further drowned him in memories until it seems his entire life had flashed before his eyes since his return.

Room to room, his footsteps sounding loud in the dim light, a trail of accelerant winding along behind him. Before long he returned to the front door, where it all began. (Where it had all began.)

He sank to his knees, head lowered. For a fleeting moment, he considered a prayer. A few faltering words escaped his lips, barely audible. Then he stopped. Instead he uttered a whispered apology, and then let silence settle over the world again.

The precious silver lighter appeared from his pocket, held in unsteady hand. The covering flipped open with that familiar sharp sound. A few flicks of the thumb, and a small glow sparked into existence.

Mick lowered his hand. The flame touched the damp path he had lain. Within seconds, a trail of fire spread throughout the safehouse, spirals and snaking lines, leading from room to room until a golden-red glow lit up the surroundings, casting dancing shadows across the walls.

He rose to his feet, watching his old friend devour tangible memories; magazines, old jackets, rugs, wooden carvings, foolish trinkets. The sofa they had fallen asleep on more times than he could count started to burn, faded colour slowly blackening. Smoke wisped through the air as the familiar crackle of the flames sang.

Mick stood there with the heat against his skin, the blaze reflected in lachrymose eyes. It wasn’t until a flame bit into his hand and the roar filled his ears that he turned and left it all behind.

When early morning came, most had seen or heard of the phenomenon they thought of as strange. Several areas in the city had gone up in flames during the night, tongues of fire spiraling high into the sky as what seemed to be homes hidden from view burned to the ground.

Most had their suspicions as to who the arson might have been. Most didn’t have a clue as to why he would have targeted empty homes.

Two opposite sides of the spectrum, those who fought for justice and those who opposed it, however, knew. They knew all too well that the smouldering wreckages strategically placed throughout the city and lit like beacons that night were pyres.

The man who set them alight was nowhere to be found come dawn.


End file.
